


The Gamut

by Alex_deMorra (Ergo_Sum)



Series: Fence Sitter [11]
Category: Original Work
Genre: A New Start, Aftermath of Violence, Bullying, Child Abuse, Guidance Counselors, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Running Away, Triggers, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:52:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8872864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergo_Sum/pseuds/Alex_deMorra
Summary: Chapter 11 - Fence Sitter.
Sixteen-year-old Micah comes home from a long day to find his mother enraged.





	1. Chapter 1

Wednesdays were the nights I didn’t so much walk through my door -- more like I drug my own sorry ass over the threshold. It went like this. I woke up at six-thirty and left by seven-fifteen. There was just enough time to drop Seth off at his school and get to mine in time to find parking. Then school. After school, I booked it to the community center for a three-hour practice, followed by an hour-and-a-half of capoeira. Dinner consisted ofenergy bars and apples whenever I started to flag. And if my homework wasn’t finished at lunch or study hall, I set tomorrow’s alarm for five-thirty because I was barely coherent after all that.

Tonight, though, there was something else that happened. I noticed it as soon as I got home. It started with a noise from the back of the house. I thought we were being robbed.

Mom and Seth should be here.

I went back outside to check whether mom’s car was parked in the driveway. It was. Should I call out for them? No. Because if someone else was here, they might get hurt. Fear spread from my throat to my mouth. It tasted like tin.

What was I supposed to do?

I looked around for something to grab. Fire extinguisher. Tire iron. A kitchen knife. Things that movie characters magically grabbed weren’t to hand, except the kitchen knife, which was exceptionally flimsy, dirty, and non-threatening.

It stayed on the counter.

Best chance I had, I decided, was to have my hands free. So, I hid my backpack under the stairs and walked as quietly as I could through the living room, past the kitchen and turned into the hallway on the right that led to all bedrooms and bathrooms save the master, which was upstairs.

The bedroom door was off its hinges. Not just that. It had been thrown across the hall into the room that we still called “grandpa and grandma’s” room, though they didn’t visit us nearly as much as they used to.

_Fuck._

The floor beneath me turned to jelly. Or was it just my legs?I needed to be someone else. _Mestre_. If he were here, he’d go in, take charge, and deal with it. Everything would be fine. His legs wouldn’t wobble. He wouldn’t be breathing hard. I just needed to pretend to be like him. Stocky and solid. Sure footed. Able to insult people in three languages without cussing.

Okay. I could do this.

I continued the rest of my walk down the hallway carefully. The room — my room — or, since I shared with by brotherSeth — our room — had been turned inside out. The sheets were ripped from the bed. The clothes from the dresser and closet were thrown on the floor. Posters of gymnasts and bands were torn or torn down; the ones with football and soccer players were not. And on the mattress of the lower bunk, my mother with a bag that I knew she had to have dug deep for in order to find it.

My heart sank.

This wasn’t a robbery.

This was my fault.

Mom was fuming. Her frown was hard. Her chin dimpled. Her lower lip tremored. She’d worked herself up to a degree that I hadn’t seen in months, possibly years. Her voice shook as she questioned me, “Would you like to tell me what this is, Micah?”

No, I really didn’t.

I would have thought it was obvious.

The thing she held in her lap was my secret stash of make-up that I’d been gathering for as long as I could remember. There were things in there from even before Tyrell left. Eyeshadows, mascaras, foundations, powders, highlighters, lipsticks, removers, concealers, anything and everything that I’d seen on the shelves and in mom’s magazines where I learned about everything from smokey eyes to bedroom lips and how to add saline solution to drying mascara to make it last longer.

“There’s hundreds of dollars worth of stuff in here.” She picked a few things out, looked at them and threw them back in the bag with disgust. “I know that you don’t have that kind of money. And I haven’t seen you with a girlfriend for a while. So I’ve got at least two problems with this. You want to guess what those are?”

I didn’t have to guess. I knew exactly that she knew exactly where that stuff came from and why I had it. I hadn’t stolen anything for a long time, though. Of course, that’s how I got most of it. I _did_ buy a few things. Granted, that was my method: To buy one thing and go to different stores to lift one of the same in a different color. Then, if I was caught, I had a receipt. It just couldn’t be too old or too wrinkled. That’s not to say I’d never been stopped. Just not caught. And the times that I did, I was pretty easy to pull out something like, _it’s for my mom/grandmother/sister that I didn’t have — I forgot she asked me to hold it — I’m a dude — why else would I have this — do I look like I’d wear make up?_ No one ever took that line of questioning any further.

The point was, I hadn’t taken anything since Seth and I came back home. So all that stuff was like two years old or something. Had mom looked more carefully, she could tell that everything had been used at least once and a lot of things were almost gone. But I knew that didn’t matter. It only mattered that I had stolen that shit — she _knew_ I had stolen it — and that I hadn’t yet been punished for it.

Then again, had _I_ paid attention, I would have seen this coming.

Mom had been off-kilter ever since dad took me and Seth out to dinner to tell us that he was going to marry Laura. Mom held it together (for the most part) for my Seth’s _bar mitzvah_ (which he went through with both more grace and more reluctance than I did), for their separation and subsequent divorce, for the accusations against my coach and his acquittal, for my competitions, for joint custody arrangements, for split holidays, for the revelation of his affair. She had been primed for this for a long time, the right conditions laid-in-wait for some specific incendiary device to ignite a seriously proper blow-out.

Then it happened.

Dad’s announcement must have lit the match. I didn’t know what that was but I did know that it led to this moment. The one in which she held, in her hand, my favorite lipstick, the one that shouldn’t have been a big deal but it was. I had gone through four slightly wrong shades before I found the perfect color: _Bijoux_. It more than the perfect color, it was the perfect texture. The first time I put it on, I knew what people meant when they said something was smooth like butter.

And I knew it was a stupid thing to care about but the design was my favorite. The tube was long and skinny and metallic and was shaped so that the chromed cap and the top of the dispenser were sleekly cut on a diagonal, like the top of some fancy skyscraper in New York. It was a thing made for grown-ups. Sophisticated ones. Grown-ups who knew how to navigate the world around them.

She removed the cap and tossed it to the side, only for it roll back into the crevasse made between her thigh and the sagging mattress. Then she twisted the barrel so that the tube of color rose out of its container. Her nostrils flared to such a degree that the half moons on the curve of her nose were white. Her breath was unsteady, jigsawing up and down, and growing with intensity as she got madder and madder. The next thing she said to me was, “You think this makes you look good, Micah?”

I didn’t say anything.

Then again, I never did.

To be more accurate, I never could.

Once she was like this, there wasn’t anything I could do to make her stop. It’s been like this since before I transferred middle schools. I let the words flow over me and tried not to take too many of them on board as I reminded myself of what the Dr. Perlman said, _this isn’t malicious, Micah. No parent sets out to hurt their child._

We’ve had so many discussions over this. About how she got mad at me because I reminded her of herself and because she got so frustrated with not knowing what I needed or how she was supposed to be able to help me. _She knows she’s hurt you in the past. She never wants to again and she’s doing a lot of work to make sure that she doesn’t lose control ever again._

I’m afraid that she’s failed.

Or, maybe I did.

“Did you ever stop to think about how selfish you’ve been?” she asked. Her nostrils continued to flare in offense at something I’ve done or, more likely, just at me. “You _need_ so much. You _take_ so much and you don’t even realize it. Do you really think the world works like that? That you can steal and steal and steal and never get caught? Well, you know what, Micah? I should have brought you to juvenile hall years ago. I’m so _sick_ of you. And you know what? So is your father. _You_ are the reason he left us. Not me. _You_.”

Her voice was so ugly when she laid into me like this. Like she didn’t just _say_ the things she was saying. Her entire face contorted with their emphasis. Like that made her more right. Especially when her voice got continually louder, where she leaned forward, and it felt like she got closer and closer even though she remained right where she was, sitting on my bed.

In response, I did that thing where I disappeared into myself.

Which she hated.

And the fact that this thing I did where I couldn’t talk back wasn’t just me being a dick. Dr. Perlman said so. She called it selective mutism, as if giving it a name made it forgivable or, at the very least, treatable or, at the very, very least, explainable. It was part of having social anxiety, something that she and I supposedly shared, and something I had never admitted to anyone and probably never would.

She stood up and glared at me. “It’s that face again — that dumb, ugly face when you don’t care enough to participate in a conversation. Do you know how hard it is to look at you? Do you?” her voice was contained, simmering but ready to boil over. She prowled slowly over to me to grab me at my elbow and walk me towards the mirror so that she could force my own face upon me. “Well come on, Micah. If I have to look at it, so should you.” She held up the lipstick again and said, “This will fix you, won’t it?”

I didn’t see it coming: the instant in which this scene went from “here we go again” to something entirely devastating.

Her arm slashed downward in an arc and left a dark stripe of red along one cheek and across my lips. The smear of color was too close to what it might have looked like had she wielded a knife. It shocked me more than it hurt. The waxy material absorbed the brunt of the force. Then there was a second one — a sleek and fat, shiny line across my jaw and over my neck. And a third over my forehead and into my hair.

I tried to get away but she grabbed my shirt by the collar and ended up ripping it from neck to the middle of my chest.She got up in my face, “You think this makes you look good?”

She stabbed and slashed and caught me several times before the sharp edge first across the chest and then on the return at my rib cage. I didn’t remember when she got my arm. But I did remember the way she grabbed my hair and pulled me to the side and faced me toward the mirror again, frenzied with her words and her motions and repeated, “This is what looks good to you, Micah — is it?” The violence of her words, the violence of her actions, the violence of the bright color that now combined lipstick with blood in ribbons across my face and still she held me there until _that look_ , stunned and impotent, crumpled completely and then blurred so that I could hardly make out anything.

“There you go, Micah! Your make-over. You look fucking fabulous. Never better!” She pushed me forward and over to the side so that I smacked my lip on the curve of the door knob while she stalked back to my bed where she proceeded to dump out my bag and threw each item one by one at my walls, which I may or may not have stood in front of.

I sunk to the ground and, with my head down, hugged my knees. I could hear — and sometimes feel — the thin plastic shells of eyeshadows and blushes breaking apart and the heavier thuds of the closed containers to shatter against the plaster walls, the wooden door, or me, sometimes leaving shards where they had made impact. Sparkly colors from gray to green to pinks bloomed in small clouds and settled into the carpet in tiny piles.

She was relentless and moved on to random objects around the room — books, CD’s, coffee cups, pens. She just kept going, going, going until I realized that at some point it stopped.

I looked up.

Dad had come out of nowhere and trapped mom’s arms under his in a bear hug. Her hands were bleeding. She was hyperventilating. The spit that flew from her mouth onto the ruined carpet already ruined by so many other things.

Dad’s fiancee Laura was holding a wild-eyed Seth in the hallway where he’d been watching for who knew how long.

“Micah,” ordered my dad, “for god’s sake, get in the bathroom and clean yourself up.”

I ran across the hall locked the bathroom door behind me and, again, looked at my face even as mom cried, “You need to get him the hell out of here. You need to get him away from me. I’ll kill him. I’m going to kill him.”

She didn’t sound enraged anymore, just freaked out, which freaked me out because it solidified that the sentiment was real.

Cleaning this mess wasn’t so straight forward. A soap soaked washcloth loosened the deep color from my skin. I stopped, rinsed, sudsed up again to get the stain to fade. The blood was a different story. I couldn’t get it to stop.

In the other room, my dad was defensive, “You know very well why I can’t take Micah.”

The reason was that I had both _tendencies_ and a _history_. These might poorly influence Laura’s daughter Darla or, worse, I might _do_ something to her. It was a risk she was not prepared to take. I would be welcome for dinner and Seth would be welcome anytime.

The sound of sirens grew louder. Then they ceased. Then several people scurried down the hallway, past the bathroom door and, guided by dad, into my room, where they tended to my mom and, eventually, took her out of my room and out of the house.

There was a knock on the bathroom door.

I didn’t answer.

He knocked again and said, “Micah, my name is Greg. I am a police officer. Will you open the door, please?”

My face was a smear of pink and my lip wouldn’t stop bleeding. “I’m fine.”

“I can’t leave until I can see that for myself, son. I have someone from the Emergency Services team here. All we need to do is to see if you’re okay. If you are, we’ll make a record of it and you can go on with your evening. Please open the door.”

A police officer with a padded chest, radio, gun, and handcuffs stood in front of me. But his face was nice. A sharp nod told me he wouldn’t make a big deal out of what I looked like.

I followed him to the kitchen table where a woman in a navy blue medical jacket — the kind with piping and asterisk shaped medical logos — set up first aid supplies. She tended to my cuts and scratches and took my vitals while Officer Greg Something talked to me about what happened and explained that someone from CPS would be here soon to document everything. The flashes that lit the hallway from my room told me it the documentation had already started.

By the time CPS had come and gone, Laura had taken Seth to their house, and I was patched up and adorned with an array of butterfly bandages. They gave Dad the choice of staying with me or having me placed with a family. He didn’t take a second to think about it. Nor did he call Laura to get permission.

I felt incredibly grateful for that. So grateful, in fact, that I found myself wanting to forgive him a bunch of things that swore I’d never forget. Even if he preferred to sleep on the couch with all of his clothes on, like a stranger.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m sorry, Micah. She’s not quite up to seeing you yet,” Dr. Perlman told me from across the neat silver table in a small bare office. “And, I suspect that you aren’t quite ready to see her either.”

They let Dad in to see her right away. He was with her now.

Apparently, I was supposed to stay here to talk to Dr. Perlman. I thought I was supposed to talk about my feelings but she kept asking questions about mom:

“Could you tell if she was getting sleep?”

“No. Maybe?” I said. She slept in another room on another floor. “I heard her go to the bathroom more than usual.”

“Has she acted differently?”

“Not really. I mean, I thought she was good.” Mom talked about all these different plans. She signed up for her next level certification. She had just come back from exercise class. She went on a date. “She was busy but she kept up with everything, you know?”

Dr. Perlman knitted her eyebrows as if what I told her wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“How energetic has she been?”

“Yeah. I mean, like I said. It seemed like she was doing really well. She was busy. Um…last week she wanted to do stuff with me and Seth.”

“What kind of things?”

“Treating us. We went to the mall and we each got something we really wanted. We went to the park after. It was fun. Just…I don’t know…she was being silly. We laughed a lot.”

“I see. What about alcohol? Had she been drinking a lot?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about eating?”

“Um. No. She said she was dieting.”

“How was she dieting?”

“I don’t know, really. Just that she didn’t eat a lot. But I think she was doing well because she got these new clothes. She was really proud of herself.”

She looked up at the opening door and then back to me with a brief smile. “Right. Thank you, Micah.”

My chest fluttered with this horrible certainty that the things that seemed like all the clues that had told me she finally turned a major corner were actually the opposite. Dr. Perlman didn’t even have to say it aloud.

It was Dad that came in, “What does all this mean? What’s going to happen next?”

“Right now, Suzanne is in a state of crisis. It could be that she’s just had an acute bipolar episode. There are some other things we need to rule out. In general, it’s quite rare for someone with bipolar disorder to exhibit hhigh-risk behaviors that involve physical assault. Usually, we see it manifest in some other way. But, your mother is a person, not a statistical measurement. So, we have to take her as she is in order to help her the best way we can,” she told dad and then she paused briefly before answering his second question. “As for what’s next, she’s voluntarily agreed to stay in the hospital for the week.”

“I see. And then what?”

“Once we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with, she’ll have a plan of treatment that should be shared with the family. I highly recommend that we have a group meeting or two with family and close friends to go over how to recognize when an episode is oncoming and how to troubleshoot it.”

Dad got angry, “But she was getting help. She was seeing _you_ , for god’s sake. Why didn’t you prevent this?”

“I understand your anger. I do. Behaviors that take place over days and weeks aren’t always self-evident during an hour-long session, Mr. Swaeler. That’s one of the reasons it will be so important to make sure that you understand what the danger signs are.”

“And if I wanted a second opinion?”

“ _She_ is welcome to get one. While you are family, you are no longer in a position to make medical decisions for her. She will be here for a week. I’d be glad to facilitate an appointment with any psychiatrist that she agrees to.”

“What about Micah?” he asked.

She was surprised by his question, “What _about_ Micah?”

“I think he should be screened for this bipolar.”

“He has already screened negative for Bipolar Disorder.”

“I want it done again,” he insisted.

So, instead of going to my next morning class, I was screened again. And again, I screened negative.

I didn’t have it.

Before we left, she reminded him, “Your son has social anxiety. He’s making progress. He’s got good grades. He’s performing well with his athletics. He just happens to bean introvert and is sometimes attracted to other boys, neither of which is a disorder.”

He disagreed.

On all counts.

Dad dropped me off at school and signed me in late. The school counselor Miss Ruiz watched him hand me a twenty on his way out the visitor’s door.

“Micah,” she stopped me and with the curl of her index finger, gave me instructions to join her in her office. I sat on one of the two thinly padded, olive green, plastic moulded chairs that sat against the wall under a poster with a guy rowing a kayak into the golden orange sunset. Under the word A*C*H*I*E*V*E*M*E*N*T was a longer quote that I couldn’t read from here but presumably was meant to provide inspiration. 

“So,” she said, breaking the silence. It was obvious that she was trying not to make it so obvious that she was inspecting my face. Her eyes kept drifting to somewhere I knew there was a bruise or a butterfly bandage. Then she’d notice that I saw her looking. Finally she gave up trying to be subtle and used her index finger to point to all my damage in a dot-to-dot sort of way, “I’m worried about this.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t call the police.”

“Um. Because they were already at my house last night.”

“Uh huh.”

“My mom’s in the hospital.”

Miss Ruiz didn’t respond to that. So I continued, “She’s the one that did this. Not my dad.”

“So you’re going to stay with your dad?”

“Dad’s staying with me for a few days.”

She was quiet for a bit. It was clear that she wasn’t happy with the situation. “And then what, Micah?” she inquired, “What happens then?”

I shook my head and looked over at the far wall. That’s when it hit me: I was so tired. Like my eyes were sore and my stomach hurt and I wanted to go to sleep for a week. The last thing I wanted to do was to face a day of students eyeballing me. The second last thing I wanted to do was to figure out how I was not going to live with dad and not going to live with mom and definitely not live with my grandmother.

She looked at me funny. Her head was tilted, her brows were knitted, and her eyes were open wide in alarm.

Crap. I said it out loud.

She pulled up her computer and said, “Let’s take a look at your grades.” They were good. I knew they were good. Kenny, my boss at the community center, that if I kept a 3.5 or above, I could work two nights a week plus the weekend. But if I got lower than a B average, I couldn’t work there anymore.

“And you work?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re on the varsity gymnastics team?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you compete. Do you have a sponsor?”

I shook my head.

“I see that you’re in Ms. Wright’s AP Government class. I happen to know that project assignments come up. She likes students to come up with their own topics. Something personal, you know what I mean?”

“Okay.” I had no clue where she was going with any of this.

“Come sit over here,” she said. I moved my chair and sat behind her. There was a website with a blue banner that said Superior Court of California and to the left of that was the California state banner. “Now, I wouldn’t have a clue as to whether this might be a topic you’d be interested in.”

Her mouse hovered over the word and below that word was small script that read _Emancipation is a legal procedure by which the court frees children from the custody and control of their parents or guardians before they reach the age of 18._

“Now, I would never advise you on a topic of study nor would I knowingly share this sort of information in my capacity as a school counselor. But…”

She clicked the button that said _Forms_.

“Say you went to the public library and you went to this website just to see if this topic — or maybe another one — is interesting to you, you’d be able to print any form that you might be interested in. See what I mean?”

The printer next to her computer hummed and printed sheet after sheet. I swallowed. I looked at her. She cleared her throat and looked away, like there was something on her desk that needed urgent attention.

“Here you go, Micah Swaeler,” she said. “I believe these might have fallen out of your bag.”

I took the stack of forms and she continued talking like she hadn’t done anything at all. “Now, we’re going to need to talk about universities soon. I think we should get you set up for early ACT’s, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, alright then. Come see me next week during your study period.” She put my name in her schedule.

When she looked at me again, her face was clear and her eyes were bright. “Now, if that’s all I can do for you, I have work to do and _you_ need to get to class.”

I stashed forms in my bag and hoped to find the nerve I would need to fill them out.


	3. Chapter 3

“ _Polar,_ wait up man!” shouted  Júnior over the few disgruntled voices telling him to watch where he was going. Yesterday, I managed to avoid just about everyone. I almost made it through today as well.

First thing Júnior said when he caught up and saw me from the side was, “Holy shit. What happened to your face?”

I didn’t want to explain it. “Blender malfunction.”

“Don’t do that, dude.” He shook his head. “I just want to know if you’re okay.”

I grabbed the rest of my books from my locker and stayed a moment to let the prickling in my eyes quit before I stepped back, releasing the metal door to shut with a _clang_.  Júnior was right in my face. Not like he was threatening me. If anything, it was just the opposite. I didn’t expect him to be soft with me like that.

I took a long look at him. 

He was not the same guy I met when he came to _Mestre’s_ two and something years ago. For one thing,he used to have this belly that flopped over his pants and stringy hair that flopped over his face. He always frowned or sneered and was grumpy, and no matter how we tried to engage the guy, he kept telling us to fuck off. _How are you today? Fuck off. What do you have for lunch, man? Fuck off. Need help with your homework? Fuck off._

Oh, he still did that last part. But now, when he did it, he was usually _joking, not joking_. I thought that maybe he did it to remember how far he’d come. Or he just really liked saying _fuck._

His nickname, _Colher_ , meant spoon, and like the rest of us, he was barely given a hint as to what it was supposed to mean. So, kids are going to think whatever they want to. Me — as polar bear — was the token white kid. _Colher_ was a big boy named after the thing to shovel in food. On the one hand, I _knew_ neither was the real meaning but I couldn’t help thinking that _Mestre_ wasn’t exactly ignorant of all the other meanings of the names he gave us either. I had this theory that there was definitely some part of him who wanted us to confront that as a way of learning how to fend for ourselves. Kinda like that guy who named his kid Sue.

And he did. The kid. Fend for himself, I meant. Because we were with _Mestre_ , we were all that kid. 

Júnior figured it out. He was hot shit. And thanks to some lucky genes, he was also the spitting image of the Oscar de la Hoya. The young version. Right out of the Olympics. It didn’t take two thoughts to know not to fuck with him. And he was solid. Nothing shook him. And he always wore this little smile that was always ready to break into a big one. Plus the dude had swagger. Rumor was, he could make a girl come faster than the roadrunner could trick Wile E Coyote. Which might have been why Lisa Sanchez and Bonnie Tanner held their books close to their chest while their eyes swept him without a single care as to whether or not he saw. Or why Allie Reynolds snapped her head back toward her locker when she was caught checking him out. 

But he wasn’t paying attention to them. His attention was on me and he wasn’t about to be dissuaded until I gave him answers. “Yeah, I’m okay. Looks worse than it is.”

“That one,” he said, pointing to my lip, “looks like what mine before it healed up.” The thin purple line that ran from just inside the corner of his mouth to the fold that separated his cheek from his upper lip. I could live with that. He continued, “Yeah, it isn’t so bad. You’ll still be a pretty boy.”

“I’m not pretty,” I contested. Okay, maybe not compared to him or Dominic or the guys who seemed to leak excess testosterone.

_And…oh…there was that other thing I liked to do…_

But even when I got everything perfect, I still wouldn’t call the way I looked _pretty_. It was more like the good parts were amplified, the bad parts were covered over, the contrast was turned up, and I was — in the confines of my room — unleashed. 

Or, that’s how it used to feel. Now, if I thought about it (and I have made an effort not to think about it), it felt like that part of me had been violated.

“You’re not _pretty_ pretty, you’re like…” his head tilted and his forehead wrinkled as he made up his mind as to what flavor of pretty I was, “Okay. I got it. You’re like those guys in Target ads, right? Like you’re all clean cut even when your hair is messy and your shirt is hanging out, you look all sweet and innocent and shit.” 

“That’s because I _am_ all sweet and innocent and shit. I can’t believe you’d imply otherwise.”

He bumped my arm and chuckled. “You say shit like _imply otherwise._ No one talks like that.”

“Lots of people talk like that.”

“I don’t.”

The tone of that was all wrong. It made me stop in my tracks. A few steps later, he stopped too. he looked back at me and the raised eyebrows under his hoodie said, _what?_

“Does that bug you?” I asked.

“What? That you talk the way that you do or that I don’t?”

“Yeah. Either.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Everyone knows that you’re this super smart dude that’s going to make it. I mean, you’re definitely going to be a doctor or lawyer or something like that, right?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“It’s not like that for me.”

“Bullshit.”

“Not bullshit. I got a record, I got…” He waved his hand, palm up, to the rest of the campus, and I think I understood he was trying to tell me that he had _this_ and couldn’t picture anything beyond it. “Just look at us, _Polar_.Right now, we’re kind of in the same place. We’re both with _Mestre_. We’re both at the same school. We’re the same age. But you’re gonna get to go to school and do whatever you want to do. You’ll probably make shitloads of money. You’ll move away. I’ll stay here.”

“It does have to be like that.”

“You asked me a question. And I’m telling you how I see it. You got chances I don’t. Maybe it’s not all of it but, yeah, part of it is because you look _you_ and talk like _you_. Even all beat up, people treat you like you’re going to get out of here and do things.”

“Yeah, but…” I knew what he was saying but that couldn’t be the end of it. It just couldn’t.

“But nothing, man. Just forget it.”

“ Júnior.”

“Nope.”

I repeated myself, this time more strongly, “Júnior…”

He didn’t say anything. And the way he looked at me was like I couldn’t possibly say or do anything to make it better so I’d best not say anything more about it. But I thought he was wrong about that. I ran to catch up to him and caught him by his sleeve.“Why’d you come find me today?”

“Cause I heard you were in the shit,” he said, incredulous that I might have thought he would have done anything else.

“Okay. I was in the shit. So when you found me, what were you going to do about it?”

“Whatever needed doing. What’s your point?”

“My _point_ is that no one else did. Today, you checked on me. Last week, you fixed Bea’s bike. You just…I dunno…no one has to tell you to do something. You see it for yourself and you do it.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, my job at the community center? That’s what it is,” I explain, somewhat effectively. This wasn’t exactly what I meant to be making a point about.

His voice got tighter and louder and I could tell by the way he leaned over towards me that I’d said something to aggravate him, “Your point is that someday, if I’m really fucking lucky, I can have your job at the community center?”

Yeah, okay. That sounded insulting but that was _not_ where I thought I was going with my thinking. “No. I mean yes, if you want it. Kenny’s awesome. But that’s not my point. My point — okay — I read these articles, right?” I sensed that whatever I said next could go well or badly. “When you read stuff about people who did amazing things — maybe they invented stuff or started their own company. Whatever.”

“They all had things in common. Three things. First, if they saw something that needed doing, they did it. Nobody needed to tell them how to do it. The next thing was that when it looked hopeless to keep going -- like other people would have quit -- they kept at it. And the third thing was that they messed up a bunch of times. They all did those things but also they got lucky one day. And they had to recognize it. Take it for what it was.”

He didn’t say anything but I could tell he was listening. I went on. “You already do that, dude. You’re that guy who does all those things. And I don’t know if even notice but people pay attention to you. Like you can get them to do what you want. So, I get the position that you’re not so helpless, man. There isn’t much reason you couldn’t be with me doing the same stuff I do either.”

His lip twitched and he squinted to look off into the distance over my shoulder and into the sun. Then he looked back at me and waited for me to continue.

“Plus, you know, the reason that I’m in advanced classes?”

“Because you’re smart?”

“Because my mom worked and didn’t want us to be home alone. So, I’ve always taken summer school. Seriously.”

He sounded surprised. “You’ve never had a summer off?”

I shook my head. 

“Never?”

“Nope.”

“And, Júnior, the gymnastics thing? Five days a week, three hours a day. Plus, I workout. And, I work 2 nights and on weekends. You _could_ do all that. I mean, if you wanted to. But there is no time for anything else.”

“You don’t like gymnastics?”

“You kidding? I love it. It’s everything,” I told him. “But there’s always something riding on it - the next competition, the possible sponsorship, the possible scholarship. I can’t slack in in practice because I never know when a scout’s going to show up. Or _if_ one’s going to show up. So, yeah, it’s fun and I love it…but it isn’t just for fun.” 

“So that’s why you don’t hang out more with us — because you’re busy?”

“I hang out with you.”

“Ha. Oh yeah, when? At school?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not hanging out.”

“Shut it, Júnior,” I joked, “For _me_ , it’s hanging out, alright? It’s all the hanging out I do.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. What did you think?”

“I dunno. Sometimes, it feels like you …” he hesitated.

That got my attention. “What?” I asked. 

“You can be kinda distant. Like, I don’t always know where I stand with you. Sometimes it seems like you think you’re too good for us. Or…you’re…kinda…” He swallowed hard and grimaced, “prickly.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. The feeling of what he said settled in my throat like rubber cement. If I’d thought anything it was that it was me that didn’t measure up. I wasn’t cool enough. I was awkward. I couldn’t joke around. The only place I fit with them was when I stepped into the _roda_. And when I was done, I was back to being same old me.

Júnior scrutinized my reaction, “Sorry, man — I didn’t mean…”

My face flushed up and the tears were threatening me again. “Yeah…pretty sure you meant it,” I croaked. “I don’t think I better than anyone.”

He backed off and ceded, “Okay.”

We finished walking to the front of my school where Dante, Rory, and Eliyah (aka _Palhaço, Abrutre, and Pau_ ) waited for Júnior in Eliyah’s VW van. The iconic, white-topped blue block was rusted out. It was also plastered with red, yellow, and green stickers of all things Rasta, save images of bud, which would (a) get him evicted from school and (b) require him to hand his hide over to _Mestre_ and _Tia_ while the rest of us looked on and hoped for the best.

I said, “bye” to Júnior under my breath and set my sights on my silver POS which was parked a hundred yards to the right of the van. The three of them didn’t even say _hi_ , they just stared at my face. It was too late to avoid them.

Rory slid the van door open, leaned out to say, “Jesus, _Polar_ \- someone did a job on you, huh?”

My hackles went up.

Rory and I tolerated each other from a distance. He was someone who was both in the group and, more importantly, one of the fosters who lived with _Mestre_. I could neither avoid him nor be anything less than civil. 

Basically, we had to share the same air. 

But I was not going to forget anytime soon that, despite everything, this was the same Rory Evans hauled me by one shoulder and Kevin Muldine by the other, as we walked with their arms around me like we were best buds leaving campus together when, in actuality, they drug me to the place where the single worst event of my life would take place. And it was their fault.

So, the fact that it was _him_ hanging out of the van to notice my fucked up face pissed me off. I didn’t even get what I was saying until I said it, “Yeah, almost as good as the job you did on me. Are you jealous no one called to ask you to join in?” 

My voice had never been harder. Or colder.

He recoiled, “What the fuck, Micah?”

I pointed to my face, “Isn’t this your favorite look for me? Do you _not_ remember saying that?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Huh. That’s interesting,” I told him, ignoring the voice in my head that said _what the fuck are you doing, Micah? You have never started a fight in your life_. Because that was exactly what I was doing and for the life of me, I couldn’t stop myself. 

“Do you at least remember Tyrell? Or…how about what you made him do? Do you remember that?”

His face fell. He sat back in the seat and waved me off, “Alright, Micah. Whatever. It was a long time ago. I’m not going to remember everything. Am I?”

That’s when I lost it. It was the thing I wanted him to say to push me over the edge. Everything that I tried to handle, tried to deal with, tried to pretend like it didn’t matter, all of it came bubbling to the surface, the pressure already built up and ready to explode.

I yelled at him, “You don’t remember? That’s funny because I remember _everything_. Wanna know all the things I remember?”

He sat there with his arms folded over his chest, his face unreadable. I was getting myself so far over my head.

“I remember that you were wearing your brand Air Jordans. I remember that Kevin Muldine’s jeans jacket had that stupid fucking Harley Davidson patch with wings on it. I remember that when I got there, one of you assholes had ripped the shirt that his dad gave him for his birthday. Don’t remember it? It was yellow and gray checked. He always wore it unbuttoned over another shirt.”

Honest to god, I could see him and all the details just like it happened yesterday.

“Don’t remember that? How about how the four of you fucking stood around. You towered over us and threatened us and you didn’t walk away until you knew that he was going to follow your ass everywhere and do exactly what you wanted him to and he did it because you guys were scary as fuck!”

Rage burned me from the inside. The words spewed out of me and, maybe I could have controlled them a little, but I didn’t want to. 

“So, you’re telling me that you don’t even remember him? _You_ don’t remember Tyrell Johnson? Well, I do. He was smart and wicked funny and the best fucking friend I ever had. Then you had to go and take him from me and just fucking ruin him. Do you even know where he is? Or if he’s still alive? Or if you fucked him up so bad that he’s in jail or hurting people or dead somewhere? Huh - do you?!”

Dante and Júnior were at either side of me, warning me about something, telling me to stop talking or chill out or something, but I could barely hear them for the sounds coming out of me.

“Why was it that big of a deal to you anyway? Why did you care so much of someone else saw two guys kissing each other? How exactly did that hurt you? Because I’ve never been able to justify how you ruined my fucking life. I lost my friends. I had to change schools. I was fucking ridiculed for months. And you want to know how nice my life at home was after that? It. Was. Fucking. Shitty.”

Rory finally said something back, “You’ve been holding a grudge this long? I thought you were over this. Seriously, I thought you forgave me..”

“You want me to forgive you?” I shouted. “Then maybe you should try apologizing!”

A big, booming voice came from out of nowhere. “Micah, is there a problem here?”

Crap. Principal Forrester. I turned to him, suddenly conscious of the hot, wet tracks streaking my face.

“Is this the boy that hurt you?” The security guard reached for his radio. 

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where did that come from? I stuttered, “N-No sir.”

“We have a zero tolerance of violence policy at this school. Clearly, there is some issue here. If you’ve been hurt by any of these boys, I need to take action.” 

I stood in a stunned realization of what was happening. Rory was the one getting yelled at and, despite there being no evidence of him being in a fight, the principal was going to _take action_. 

Unfortunately, I hadn’t calmed down nor had my voice returned to normal. “Are you kidding me right now? My _mom_ did this. How can you not know that?”

“Son, you need to calm down right now.” Shit, he was scary when he talked like that. Scary enough that I did stop. I tried concentrating on what Dr. Perlman taught me about how to make my breath less shaky. 

“Now, what’s going on here?”

I shook my head and pinched the top of my nose. “They were just here to pick up Júnior. ”

The principal crossed his arms and took turns to look at Júnior, Rory, Dante, Eliyah, and me. I didn’t remember if Rory was supposed to be banned as part of my transfer or even if ever came up before.

I was not thinking clearly.

And after the last few days with my mom and now everything Júnior said about not knowing where he stood with me and thinking I really didn’t want to blow this chance I had with theseforms that Miss Ruiz (hadn’t) printed for me, I just needed this to go away quickly. 

“Micah — I’m waiting for your explanation.”

“Sir. I have had a really bad few days, okay? I have never yelled like that in my life. Like never. I was yelling and he was just sitting there, okay? He’s not a problem. It was my fault.”

“That kind of communication is inappropriate. I won’t stand for it.”

“Yes, sir. I do. Could you just…they can go, right?”

Miss Ruiz appeared and pulled Principal Forrester aside to have a few words with him. The security guard stayed close by and eyed me like I was going to go off again. The rest of them remained silent. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a small group looking on from a distance. Then I decided to look intently at the cement between my feet.

I was still mad but now it was because I couldn’t even get mad without fucking things up. 

Principal Forrester returned. “You boys go home. Micah, be in my office on Monday morning half-an-hour before school starts. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

I left. Just walked to my car without saying anything else or looking at anyone. My hand was shaking badly and I could hardly get the key in the door. There was no way should I drive right now. 

I chanced a glance up. The van was where I’d left it. Júnior, Dante, and Eliyah were standing outside the open door talking with Rory. Júnior looked up at me. 

I couldn’t deal with them right now. 

There was someone behind me. “Micah?” It was Bernadette Walker, my boss Kenny’s daughter. “You need a lift?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, thanks..”

We were driving toward the community center when Bernadette took an unexpected turn and said, “Do you mind if I stop to get something at home?”

Forrester was right. I just needed to calm down. I practiced my breathing until we pulled up to Bernadette’s house.

“Just come in a sec, yeah?”

The Walkers lived in the same development as we did. Their house was the same layout as ours. Beyond that, nothing else was the same. It was all the things my Grandma Rebecca would have approved of: plush wall-to-wall carpet, everything color coordinated, clean but cozy. It smelled like just-baked sugar cookies. The only thing wrong with it was that there were too many family pictures. Apparently, too many images of a happy family prevent a buyer from picturing themselves living there. 

“Well, hello stranger!” Bernadette’s mom hugged me. “What are you doing here?”

Bernadette answered, “I just needed to pick something up but…um…he’s had kind of a bad day. Maybe he needs a drink?” Her grin showed all of her teeth and her eyes batted all of her lashes. 

Mrs. Walker shared _a look_ with her daughter and then turned to ask me, “We have iced tea, lemonade, Dr. Pepper, water…what would you like, dear?”

“Um. Iced tea, thanks.”

She moved like she walked through water, slow and graceful, each next thing totally on purpose. She reached up to open the cabinet for a glass and then she closed it. She opened the freezer to get some ice and then she closed it. She opened the refrigerator to get the jug of iced tea and then she closed it. She picked up a cutting board, put it down, picked up a lemon, put in on the cutting board. And when the wedge was cut just so, she pierced the wedge of the fruit along the ridge of the glass, walked over to the dishwasher to place the cutting board and knife inside, and then she closed it. The exactness of it all was hypnotizing. 

She put the glass down on a coaster in front of me. Then she sat on the chair to my right but sitting sideways so that she faced toward me. I had no doubt that I had her full attention. “So, Micah…tell me about it.”

To my surprise, I did.

I started at the beginning and it came out in one big gush.

I told her about Tyrell and how horrible it was when he had to leave after his granddad died. And how great it was when he came back. And all the stuff about how we were caught kissing by Stef Tyler and how Kevin Muldine and Rory Evans tried to make me and Tyrell beat each other up over it — but also I chose not do it and he did. And how I heard they got him into trouble and how I had to change schools and how I was pretty sure he might have had to go back to live with his dad. 

I told her about gymnastics and how I started practicing at this fancy center and how Coach Bryan got blamed for something Coach Nick did. By the time I heard about it and got it cleared up, Coach Bryan didn’t want coach me anymore. And now, because of that, and because I had to go to synagogue for over a year, I was way behind where I should have been. I was on the school team rather than having a personal coach and, as far as I knew, anyone who wanted to sponsor me before had moved on. 

Finally, I told her about mom. How we didn’t know exactly what was wrong with her or when she’d be back. And how Seth had gone to live with dad and Laura, even though dad wasn’t really staying there so much because he spent the night in our house, which seemed really stupid. And how even though Dr. Perlman said their problems weren’t my fault, I didn’t entirely believe it because of things I’d done. Things that drove a wedge between them and it ended up breaking up my family. 

And I missed my brother. More than I thought I would.

And now I’ve messed everything up because of Rory and Júnior and everything that happened this afternoon.

I was crying again, like really crying, like sobbing hard. Mrs. Walker rubbed her hand around my back and just listened to me. Really listened. Like what I had to say was the most important thing in the world. She didn’t say a word until she knew I was done. 

Then she told me, “Micah, I think you’ve had a tough few days. And I very much doubt that you’ve been able to sleep much. Why don’t you rest for a while? You can stay here if you’d like.”

“I can’t. I have to practice. I _have_ to. There’s…”

“Micah. I’ll have you know that I have known you for a _very_ long time. I met you when you were fresh out of diapers. So, I’ve seen you do a lot of things and I bet I know you better than I think I do.” She paused, rubbed my arm, bent her head close to mine and said, “You are not okay right now. If you go practice, I’m scared you are going to hurt yourself. Now. One day off is going to be a whole lot better than a whole week or month or year that you needed to stay home recovering, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t really disagree. 

“Good. Now, let’s set you up to rest in Ryan’s room. I suppose I should start calling it our guest room since he’s gone off to college.”

The walk down the hallway was a hazy one. I turned left into the room that, in our house, would have been mine. His room felt like an alternate reality. 

Where my room had pine bunk beds topped with wool blankets and pilled plaid comforters, this one had a queen bed with a fluffy duvet in blue, black and bright white stripes. My room was covered with haphazard posters of random things that Seth and I liked. This one had a full-wall decoupage of dance and music performances. My room looked like it had weathered a hurricane, right down to its door being knocked off its hinges. This one looked like it could protect the people that slept there.

It was a room that would have been nice to grow up in. 

Mrs. Walker waited in the doorway while I took off my shoes and got under the covers. The mattress barely moved when I got in bed and the bedding was exactly the right temperature of beingcooler than my face. 

Just before she closed the door behind her, she said, “I’ll call Kenny to let him know you’re going to miss work. Sleep as long as you need to.”

The _snick_ of the closing door was the permission I needed to close my eyes and sink back into the pillow. 

I thought about Dr. Perlman and how she showed me how to deal with all of the memories obsessed over. They’d go into an imaginary box. Mine would be wrapped up tight, layered the outside with paper and ribbons, and tucked it away on an imaginary shelf in an imaginary room that I could only access by counting down from ten. 

Behind closed eyes, I saw myself walk into that room. I found the box. The one that held the moment that Stef Tyler hissed in my ear, “I saw you, Micah Swallows.” 

I took it down and, without opening it, without looking inside,I willed it to burst into flame. It burned until it was a small pile of silver dust. Before it could turn into anything else, I threw the remains into the river that magically appeared at my feet, and watched every single spec float into darkness.

When I woke up, I thought nothing changed. I still remembered Stef Tyler, everything she said, and everything that happened right after. The fallout remained the same. Tyrell was still gone. My dad still looked down on me. I still didn’t know when I’d see mom again. Or whether I’d get to live with Seth again. And it wasn’t like I was numb or anything but it didn’t seem to hurt so much either.


	4. Chapter 4

I already felt like a visitor.

This was my road for sixteen years. I knew every house, every car, every person, every pothole, and every drain that would inevitably get clogged an hour into first rain of the year. 

Today was the day I was moving out.

My first thought was to swing by, throw my stuff into a bag, and get away in the shortest time possible. Then I remembered that Mrs. Walker promised to help clean-up the house that was such a mess, I barely knew where to start. So there was no surprise to see her or Bernadette waiting for me in front of the house.

Dante and Júnior, were another story. What were they doing here? 

I hadn’t seen them since after school on Friday. 

At the time, letting myself to like that felt really — good wasn’t the word — satisfying. There were things I needed to say and things he needed to hear. That said, the feeling was short-lived. Not only that. I doubted that my tirade was what Júnior had in mind when he said that people needed to know where they stood with me.

And then?

And then…

There was that part where I outed myself. 

Yeah. That was unplanned. In fact, I totally didn’t mean to do that. More than that. I meant NOT to do it. 

Taken as a whole, the things I did not want to discuss with anyone in my capoeira group:

1\. My face and of the reasons it looked the way it did.

2\. The event that _was_ my going off on Rory Evans.

3\. Who I kissed and what it meant.

Mrs. Walker saw me first. She smiled brightly and waved. Bernadette did the same. The other two didn’t.

“Hey,” I said to everybody and untangled my keys from my pocket in order to open the door. 

The smell that hit us on the way in was the remains of Wednesday night’s dinner: chicken, potatoes and green beans. Seth apparently had milk. Mom had…something. All of it had now been out festering for the best part of five days. “Um. Sorry, guys. It reeks in here. Do you want anything to drink?”

I wasn’t sure which of the four of them was the quickest to say, “no, thanks.”

“So…uh…thanks, Mrs. Walker for coming over to help with this mess. You, too, Bernadette. And — guys — I didn’t know you’d be here but…uh…we’re going to be cleaning.”

Júnior said, “We can help. Why don’t you show us everything and we’ll figure how to share it up.”

“Really?”

They both shrugged and answered, “Yeah.” 

“Okay. I’ll show you my room.”

They followed me down the hall. As soon as we turned left, I heard Júnior’s low whistle. “Damn, Micah.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s pretty bad, right?”

Júnior checked out the door. It hadn’t been removed so much as ripped off its hinges. The frame had three chunks of missing wood and paint along its close side.

Bernadette picked up a chunk of wood that used to be a side of a dresser drawer. Then she picked up the three sided piece that went with it. “Can this be fixed?” Júnior came over to look. He made a face and said, “Maybe? It’s wood at least and it broke along the corner so maybe it could be made into a shorter drawer. The bottom is easy to fit. How are the rest of them?” 

“This one’s okay,” I said. “This one got bashed along the back and it doesn’t look like it’s going to go in. The last one just has a few scratches on it.”

Júnior replied, “Do you have any tools? Maybe I could see how to put it back together. I would need the same stuff to fix the door.”

Dad left half his tools here along with half-used tubs of paint and filler, opened tubes of caulk, as well as tins of oils, cleaners, and paint remover. The toolbox had plenty of c-clamps, hammers, screwdrivers, and scrapers. Dad left a stack of sawhorses, too. But aside from the sander and the drill that was as old as I was, the power tools were gone. 

“Okay, I can work with this,” Júnior stated.

“Are you sure? I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s not why you came over.”

“I’m sure. We’ll catch up later, okay?”

I nodded and filled a box with large plastic bags and things to patch up doors and walls with. I walked past Mrs. Walker, who bravely tackled the kitchen. “Dear, do you have…oh, that’s perfect.” She took a few bags and went back to work.

Back in my room, Dante and Bernadette murmured to each other and plucked small plastic shards out of the walls. Júnior cleared his throat and they stopped. “I’ll set up in the garage to fix the door and the dresser. If one of you can join me and the other two can clean up the frame? Just strip the paint back and fill the holes.”

I nodded, “Sure thing.”

Bernadette and Júnior moved the dresser and door to the garage, which left me with Dante. 

I started picking up random crap on the floor, ignoring the fact that Dante stood there with crossed arms and glowered at me. Shaking out the first of several black plastic bags, I hazarded eye contact. Not good. His first words were, “Where you been?”

“Yeah, I missed class yesterday. Sorry.”

He raised his voice, “That’s not what I asked, Micah. You haven’t been here. Not Friday, not Saturday, not this morning ’till now. You don’t have a phone. You didn’t check your e-mail.”

My voice was calmer than I felt, “How do you know I haven’t been here?”

“Because we’ve been taking turns coming by, man! We were fucking worried about you,” Dante hissed. A few moments passed by and he sniffed, adding, “Rory’s a fucking mess, you know.”

“How is that my fault?”

“You need to talk to him. For real. Sit down and talk. I know you two have been through some shit. Okay? I saw it on the first day I met you. But you just went off on him, you know?” He bit his lip and shook his head. “That thing with the principal could have been really bad, Micah. It would have come down on his head and — look, I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it. But he deserved it _back then_ , not now. It’s like you haven’t even noticed how much he’s taken on. You know. Changed things.”

“Dante, no offense but — first of all — I don’t really think right now is the time to talk to me about people being on the receiving end of things they _deserve_. Second of all, who do you think had it worse? Me from what he did or him for what I did. I just yelled at him. It might have been late but he needed to hear it. And finally, he might have been changing, but when has he ever made amends to me, huh? So you know, I think it’s pretty unfair that it’s _me_ that you’re calling out, okay?”

“Who says we didn’t?”

“You did. Right now. You basically just told me that you had his back and that I was wrong.”

“No, I said you needed to _talk_ to him. You can’t just leave things the way they were on Friday.”

There were clothes over every surface in the room but mostly the floor. I pulled out the duffle bags we had, lay them on the bed to start on two of them — one for me, one for Seth — and picked up each item to inspect it and decide whether it should be tossed or packed in one of the two bags. “Maybe you should tell me how I left things on Friday, then.”

Clearly, most of these clothes would end up in the landfill as opposed to our respective new homes. It could only be handled one piece at a time. First, these blue track pants. Next, these shorts. Then, the single sock gets draped on the bed until its mate is found. My favorite baseball shirt — the gray one with the black sleeves — was totally okay but my quicksilver hoodie was toast. It went like that until the clothes disappeared off the shelves and hangers and bed and floor into one of the three bags.

My bag was half-full. Plenty of room for shoes and toiletries. 

I picked up a trophy from one of the shelves and went to throw it in the black back with the ripped up clothes when Dante grabbed my wrist. “Micah, what the fuck are you doing?”

“It’s a crap fake piece of metal. Not even metal. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Fuck that _it doesn’t mean anything_. This is an achievement. You’re not throwing away your trophies.”

“Okay. Where are they going to go?” I shouted. “Are you going to keep them for me? Maybe you can polish them while you’re at it?”

“Will you stop? Seriously. Will you please fucking stop and look at me?”

“No, man…Dante…Mrs. Walker is here to help me. Bernadette is here to help me. What kind of shit person would I be if they agreed to meet me here and I didn’t work? If you want me to talk to you then either be happy to talk to me while I’m going through this shit or just wait until I’m done. I don’t want to be a dick to you but I’m really not going to be ungrateful to them. Okay?”

“One thing first.”

“What?” I cried. 

He stepped closer. Then, he wrapped me in his huge fucking arms and pulled me into a big ass hug. My forehead tucked into the crook of his neck. And he just laid it all out there, “It’s pissing me off that you’re walking around acting like you aren’t part of us. I’m not going to let you throw us away like you were going to do with that trophy. You can’t do that. Got it?”

“Dante?” I squeaked and squeezed my eyes tight, refusing to allow this wave of emotions wash over me. “Don’t. Please? Not right now. It’s too much.”

“Micah…I’m not bothered if you get emotional.”

“Okay, but I sort of do.”

“God. Will you just stop squirming a minute?” He kept ahold of me with his whole body. He murmured, “I’m sorry about your friend. Did you love him?

“He was my best friend since we were three years old. Of course, I loved him.”

“You know what I mean. Were you _in_ love with him?”

I pushed off him and turned my attention to the posters, most of which were half-hanging and torn, to peel them off the wall. The ones that were torn — Yuri Chechi on rings, Li Jing flying four feet over the horizontal bar in a pike position, Valery Belenkyon the podium with his gold — were trashed. I played the ones that weren’t — mostly football and soccer players — on the bed and rolled then up for Seth. “Yeah. I guess.”

I combed the walls and pulled out any remaining pins and shards, scraped off any remaining tape, and filled in any gashes or holes. Dante smoothed out the door frame to get it ready to refinish. We worked with long silences between us. And then he would ask another question. “If you were so close, why did you let anything come between you? Why didn’t you fight for him?”

How to describe the way in which, on the one hand, nothing I did worked and, on the other, how much I regretted not doing more?

“It wasn’t like there was a _thing_ that happened and fifteen minutes later it was over. The lot of them had some point to make. I told my parents what happened. I told the principal. I told his mom. And Tyrell straight up lied. He repeated the story he was told to say. He did it because he was scared shitless, you know? Just picture Rory, ok? And picture me. There were three Rory’s plus this guy Kevin who was even bigger.”

“And it didn’t end there. They’d bump into me in the hallways. Send threats through other people that they were going to kick my ass. Half the time, I didn’t know if the message was real or whether people would just getting off on watching me freak out.People _hated_ me. Even people I had never met. Honestly, Dante. There were days I didn’t —” 

I was not going to get worked up again. I just wasn’t. 

It was better to keep working. A quick survey of the place revealed that the clothes were done, the walls were done, the closet was empty, the way in which Dante’s arm was braced against the doorframe caused his shirt to pull out of his pants andexpose a strip of skin across his lower back. 

I refocused on the floor and picked up the last, larger pieces of debris — a piece of plastic, the broken curve of a coffee cup, a random shoe lace. There was still little crap everywhere. I grabbed a broom and started sweeping.

“What about Bianca?” Dante asked.

“What about her?”

“You were together for…I dunno…a year or something. Was that for real?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t cheat on her? You know…with a guy or something?”

“No,” I snapped. “Why would you think I cheated?”

“Don’t get all defensive. I was just asking, okay?”

“But what is that? Why would you ask that?”

“Because you’re gay. Isn’t that basically what you said?”

“I never cheated on Bianca,” I steamed. “It was the real deal with her. I like some girls just like I like some guys. Alright? Now you know.”

“Shit, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Okay, but like…why would you think that just because someone was queer they would cheat?”

“Maybe because you needed something more than what you had. I dunno.”

I wiped my face with my hand, holding it over my eyes for a second. Honestly, this was a messed up line of reasoning. “Say you were dating someone and … maybe they couldn’t do something you really wanted. Like…say she couldn’t give you blowjobs for whatever reason.”

He looked underwhelmed by my example.

“Just go with it, okay? So you’ve decided that you want to be with them even though you really like blow jobs. Are you with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to cheat on her?”

“No, of course not.”

“No. Exactly. If you’re with her it’s because there are tons of other reasons you made that decision. And if it wasn’t the case, like if you didn’t want to be with someone who couldn’t give you blowjobs, you’d break up. Right? Because that would be the decent thing to do.”

“Okay.”

“It’s fucked up to say I’d cheat on someone. You can’t say I’m family and that you know me and then get something like that totally wrong.”

“Alright.”

“I don’t want this to be a thing.”

“What don’t you want to be a thing.”

I had all these feelings I couldn’t explain, most of them revolved around the fact that I had something to lose again. I was settled at school, on a team, with a job. I had friends. Sort of. People didn’t hate me. 

What would happen if I arrived at school tomorrow morning to find out that everyone knew about me? The way people talked, it wouldn’t be an _if_ but a _when_. 

The thought made me sick to my stomach.

“Micah — what’s up?”

I didn’t want to say but eventually, I did,“Everyone’s going to know. It’s all going to happen again.” All of a sudden, my skin tingled and the room felt like it was turning it inside out. I couldn’t think. “Seriously, Dante. Once was bad enough but on top of everything else, I don’t think I could handle it.”

Dante brought me to sit on the bed. “Take a breath, Micah.”

“You’re going to be like — and all the guys. I blew it. I fuckin’— it’s all going to go to shit.” 

My ribs constricted, making it hard to breathe. My heart pounded its way around my body.

Just like that, he was right there with his arms were around me again. “No, no, no, Micah. You need to stop thinking like that. Just chill, okay? We’re not going to turn on you. None of us are.”

Oh fuck, no. I wasn’t going into a panic. Not here. Not now.

My leg was pressed right up against Dante’s. He rocked me back and forth. “Micah, you’re okay. I gotcha.” I wanted to relax. I wanted to believe him. I wanted that so bad. But my mind raced with thoughts of a thousand what ifs that all ended up ending me. “We’ve all got our shit to deal with okay? You, me, your mom, your dad, Júnior, Rory — all of us. That’s not a reason to drop you.”

_Focus on the exhale,_ I told myself. I blew out slowly and remembered that I should count. First to five. Then to six. _The inhale will happen._ Add another number each time until I was up to twenty. Dante kept talking me through it. Just like he said, he didn’t let go. 

What did that mean — was he really not going to distance himself now that he knew?

“You don’t have to be alone here. Come home with us. _Tia_ will find space.”

_…seven…eight…nine…_

“She’ll feed the hell out of you, too. Though you may never get to eat macaroni and cheese again. That’s like your staple right?”

_…three…four…five…_

“Bea would be freaking crazy excited to have you there for bedtime stories. Apparently, you’re the only one who does the voice right.”

_…eleven…twelve…inhale…_ I shook my head.

“Come on man. What else are you going to do?”

“Not with Rory there. He lives there. I can barely stand to see him twice a week.”

“Maybe you could try just one night?”

_…one…two…three…_ “I have somewhere I can stay for a while.”

“Who?”

“He’s not part of the crowd.”

“Where’s he live?”

“Right off the Washington Street stop.”

“That’s far.”

“Not that far. It’s convenient. I can get to school easy. I can get to the community center with my bike. It’s all on the same line.”

“How do you know him?”

“Coffee shop.”

“Wait…a coffee shop? How long have you known him?”

Do I say that noticed him eighteen Saturdays ago and learned his name (among other things) three Saturdays ago? No. It was better to stretch the truth a little, “Four or five months. Maybe longer.” Dante’s frowning. What gives? “Why are you looking at me like that?”

His hold on me loosened, causing the heat to give way to theslip of air that flowed between his chest and my arm. 

“Are you together?” He asked. “Is that why you’re moving in with him?”

I couldn’t catch his mood. Was he angry? Did I insult him? 

“It’s…uh…well, that’s not why I’m going to live with him. We get along. It’s easy. He’s been through something similar,” I explained.

“Yeah. I guess none of us would understand,” he said with words dripping with sarcasm. 

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then why, Micah? Why would you choose him over us?”

“Why are you saying it’s an either/or?”

“Because…I don’t know. Do what you want.” He stood up and walked away, returning to check his work on the doorframe. 

Great.

Now, what?

I told him we should talk later.

Looking around, I see the only thing that was left was to clean up the shelves, get rid of broken stuff, and rearrange what was left. Besides the bunk bed, there wasn’t much left in the room: trophies, books, and photos on those shelves. Some hangars in the closet. It felt wrong to leave them there. Like they were being abandoned or something.

I guess they were.

Still, though I’d come back at least one more time. As it was,the grimy white walls were now covered in bright white patches. It needed painting. The door needed to get reinstalled. The carpet was a multi-colored mess that only got worse when I tried to use stain remover on it. I had no clue what to do about that.

“Dante?” He turned to me. He was so not himself today. Dante didn’t get pissed. He was rarely serious. Was never the type to brood. How did I make him understand? “Thanks for helping today. And, you know. For saying all that stuff.”

“Sure.”

I didn’t know where this line-in-the-sand-Danny-or-us thing came from. He wasn’t that guy. If it was Júnior? Yeah. I could see it. Dominic, Eliyah, or Marky? Maybe. Bea or any of the other kids? Possibly. “Dante, can you tell me how, exactly, I’ve managed to piss you off right now?” 

He shook his head and flashed a smile that flickered just as quickly. “You didn’t. It’s fine, Micah.”

“I…no, I don’t think it is. So you know, one of the reasons I’ve been able to show up even when other stuff was going on was because of you. You’ve always been there. Sorry if I didn’t appreciate it.”

“Yeah.”

“So don’t be mad.” 

“Not mad,” he stated, clearly upset, clearly at me. His eyes were glossy. But he blinked a few times and they looked normal again. “We need to meet him.”

“Huh?”

“The guy. Your roommate, whatever. Bring him to class or dinner or something. If you want to get away with staying with this stranger instead of us, your only option is to make sure he has our approval. Got it?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll bring him by soon.”

“What’s his name?”

“Danny.”

“Danny what?”

“Callahan. His name is Danny Callahan.”

“Give me his number,” he instructed, handing me his phone. I did and gave it back.

“So,” he said as he turned back toward me and slid the hand holding his phone into his pocket, where it stayed. “You’ll come to class on Wednesday?”

“Yeah, of course. I just needed a few days to handle everything.”

“How’s your mom?”

“I don’t know. She’s going to stay at the hospital for a while longer.” Then I had to ask, “Dante, are we okay?”

He nodded and I wanted to believe him but I had this niggling feeling that I had done something really wrong, something personal, and I couldn’t figure it out.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Just…we need to know how to reach you, okay? And if something happens, you need to call one of us. If you don’t want to call me, call Júnior or Dominick or someone.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to call you?”

“Because you didn’t.”

“Okay,” I admitted and guessed that was probably the reason he’d been so bent out of shape. 

A smiling Bernadette appeared in the doorway. She wore one streak of paint on her cheek and another down her forearm. Júnior was right behind her with one big paint splodge on the tip of his nose and the side-eye he was sending her way. “Your girl over there got a bit carried away with the paint can,” he grumbled without trying very hard to cover up the twinkle in his eye and the little smile that wasn’t for me.

“So,” Bernadette started, “I think we’re done with all we can do today. You should take a tour. Mom’s a powerhouse.”

I went to the bathroom to pack up my toiletries. 

Mrs. Wilson had already been in here to work her magic. The sink was clean. As were the mirrors, bathtub, toilet, and floors. Under the sink, the towels were folded to sit in a perfect column and all the rest of the stuff that mom purchased cheap with the help of weekly sales and double coupons — toothpaste, shampoo, soap, deodorant — were lined up with their labels facing forward, just like they might be in the store we bought them from.

I hauled one of the trash bags outside and passed the kitchen, which looked better than it probably ever had in its entire existence. The front room was less dusty and smelled better than it did two hours ago. In the garage, the door lay prone and painted on two sawhorses, the broken dresser drawers had been reassembled and were sitting front-side-up, minus drawer pulls, which were painted and sitting on a nearby newspaper. 

“Wow!”

“I know, right?” chirped Bernadette. “I’m going to get mom.”

“I can’t thank you enough. This looks amazing,” I said to Júnior. He wasn’t paying attention to me; he was staring at the girl bounding up the stairs.

I stood close to Júnior to say under my breath, “You know the guy who runs the community center?”

“The big dude?”

“Yeah.”

“What about him?”

“That’s her dad.” As soon as I said the word _dad_ , Júnior’s eyes went wide. “He’s cool and everything but he’s a little protective of her. Just thought I’d let you know.”

“Sure. Thanks. Uh…she’s cute, right?” 

As far as I knew, Júnior went for the girls who looked like JLo with high heels growing out of their feet. Bernadette, on the other hand, had a head full of wild black spirals, a bridge of freckles over her nose, brown puffy bowed lips that turned up sharply at the corners, and a closet of hoodies, baggy overalls and long distance running gear. She was more than cute. 

“Totally,” I agreed and went back inside the house to bring out the last of the big, plastic bags of trash.


	5. Chapter 5

I was in the middle of making dinner when Danny came home.He tossed his keys somewhere and appeared a few feet behind me to stand with his weight on one hip with a smile skewed to one side and an eyebrow raised in amusement. 

“Hey, Danny. What’s up?” 

“There’s a cute boy in my kitchen making something that smells good.”

“Uh…thanks?”

He came closer and rested his chin on my shoulder to check out what I was doing? “So, what’s that?”

“Spaghetti”

“Really?”

“Yeah, why?”

“There’s carrots in there.”

“So?”

“What are those things?”

“Broccoli?”

“No, _those_ things,” he clarified and pointed at the bubbling tomato concoction with centimeter-sized bits of food in every color imaginable.

“Olives?”

“No, the light yellow nubby things.”

“Garbanzo beans.”

“What’s a garbanzo bean?”

After plucking one out and blowing on it, I fed it to him. He chewed for a while and eventually announced with a grimace, “Starchy.”

“Is it horrible?” I asked.

Danny eased the spoon out of my hand to give the pot a stir. When it brought it out, there were things in it. Sauce, for one. And zucchini. I watched his light pink lips wrap around the sides of the wooden spoon. His stubble was just dark enough to show on his pale skin and emphasized the small movements of his jaw and throat as he swallowed. 

“It’s not bad,” he said and offered me the other side of the spoon. “But it isn’t like any spaghetti sauce I’ve had. It needs another name.” 

His eyes were green and sparkly under the kitchen light and the flicked down when I licked the sauce off my lower lip. “How long do I have before this magical feast is ready?”

“Uh — I haven’t started the pasta. How long does that take?” I picked up the package of bowties and looked for the instructions.

“Have you boiled the water yet?”

“No.”

“Maybe fifteen minutes to boil the water in the big pot and then another ten? You might want to put the sauce on the lowest, though. The gas flame runs hot,” he shouted over his shoulder and disappeared into the hallway that joined our two rooms.

I turned the dial down under the sauce to the setting that diminished the blue flame to a mere suggestion and proceeded to search through the cabinets for this Big Pot. 

By the time I found it, filled it with water, and put it on the stove, Danny was muttering something that sounded a lot like _no…nope…oh no…dear me…_

I went to investigate. He wasn’t in his room; he was in mine. And he was standing next to the dresser that had been meticulously organized with all of my remaining clothes just one hour ago. The floor was littered a small pile of once-white, now-gray undergarments. The top drawer hung open and, in between his thumb and forefinger, was my jockstrap. “Baby, this is so rank. I cannot let you wear this ever again.”

Oh. My. God.

Invasion of privacy much?

How about the fact that he was judging my underwear (which, to be honest, I understood in _principal_ but I actually used these for their intended purpose). 

Or…um… _baby_?

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued. “You in a jock strap? That is jam hot. But _not_ these. You need better ones. Honestly. _You do_.” He continued his rummage to find both unsatisfactory pair of boxers and an unopened box of condoms. The garment was dropped on the floor. The box, however, was held up with a cheeky grin and then efficiently unwrapped. 

I stood there in horror.

Two hours ago, that box was strategically tucked next to the can of garbanzo beans and covered by a box of Wheaties. It was a hopeful purchase, I admit. But this was not exactly the way I imagined this conversation to start.

“Did you get lube? If not, don’t worry. I have some…oh, here it is. A. Brand. New. Bottle,” he exclaimed, his face lit with joy. “Aw, and you got silicon gel, too. That _is_ the best. It really is.”

I was dying of embarrassment. 

No, not dying. 

Dead.

“Danny?” 

He put the lube on the table next to the condoms and faced me. His jaw dropped. “Oh my god, Micah. You’re beet red. What’s wrong?”

“Well…um…to start, I need those,” I said, pointing at the pile on the floor. “And next, you’re just…like…going through my stuff…and…you know…we haven’t talked about…[I cleared my throat]… _those_ [I pointed to the bedside table]…and…”

“God, you’re cute,” he cooed and sidled up to me and my so-called beet-red face, which he promptly framed in hands that were thankfully several degrees lower than the room. He looked at me through a curtain of eyelashes and leaned in to kiss me. 

“Ow,” I jerked back when pain sparked from the cut on my lip.

“Oooch. Sorry. Does it hurt?” He asked with an empathetic pout. “Oh, of course, it does. Here, I’ll focus on this side over here.” So he did. With nibbles and kisses and flicks of his tongue along my lower lip which was, thankfully, unblemished. 

My face wasn’t cooling down any.

He stripped off my shirt. “I want to see if you blush _everywhere_ ,” he teased. “You _do_. Look at that. All over your neck and chest.” His cool fingers floated over my parts that had steam rising off them. The ones above my belt, anyway.

_Jesus, this guy._

Kisses followed the trail of his fingers. They went from that spot just behind my ear down my neck to my collarbone and over to the other side. His hair smelled like lemons and fresh herbs but his neck tasted like coffee and salt. 

I forgot that I was annoyed with him.

His hands found my belt. He pulled it toward him and folded it to release the tines from the holes. At the same time, he spoke softly, “I won’t go through your stuff anymore. I just wanted to see that you settled in. Okay?”

I agreed, “Okay.”

The front button of my jeans popped open, followed by the opening of my fly. His hand rubbed on me through soft and (now I was painfully aware) well-worn cotton of my y-fronts. “But, honestly, Micah. What kind of person would I be if I let you believe it was okay to cover something as beautiful as this in something as _gawdawful_ as any of that over there?”

He was so casual about having his hand down my pants, as if what he was doing wasn’t making it so I could hardly think. I definitely couldn’t respond to the fact that he’d jettisoned my entire collection of undergarments. Did he just describe my dick as beautiful? I tried to match his demeanor, “I dunno…terrible?”

“Yes, I would be a terrible person. Then you’d be a terrible person for letting me be a terrible person. The cycle would be endless,” he cajoled and finally got back to the point he was making when I walked into the room, “You need new underwear.”

“But I need…”

“Uh huh. And you’ll have.” He peeled the ones I was wearing off me and whispered. “These are going, too.”

“Okay,” I panted.

Danny pulled me over to the twin bed against the wall. It squeaked when I sat on it and squeaked again when he did the same. He stroked me as confidently as I would have done for myself. Yet the places and ways that his wrist would twist or grip would tighten was just enough different that I couldn’t anticipate what would happen next. 

“Now as far as _those_ go,” he said, pointing to condoms and lube on the table, “I assume you wouldn’t have got them if you didn’t want to have sex.”

I shook my head.

“And judging by last night and this morning, I’m just guessing that you could have been thinking about having sex with _me_. Which is fine because I want to have sex with you.”

“You do?” I didn’t really know why I would be uncertain about this considering how he was stroking and rubbing on me. But okay. Whatever. I wanted to hear him say it.

“Mm hmm,” he purred and ran his tongue up the curve of my ear, under the flap at the top, around the side, and then all the way in with a wet, sloppy squidge. I felt the bead of come form at the tip of my dick. I groaned and closed my eyes and inadvertently smacked my head on the wall beside the bed with a resounding _thud_.

“Ooh. Careful, baby,” he cooed and curled his hand over my hair. “Have you done it before?”

“What?”

“Fucked someone.”

“Oh. That. Yeah. Only with girls?”

“Is that a question…I mean aren’t you sure?” he drawled and snuck another look at me through his eyelashes (god, I loved that) as if to say, _of course, you know_. And, sure. I mean. Sure. Yes, I was sure. I did have sex with girls. A lot of sex with one girl and not so much with another. But the last guy I got hot and heavy with (before Danny, I meant) resulted in Kevin Muldine breaking my face. And that other thing was something I didn’t want to bring up right now.

It was much more important to get Danny naked. 

Fortunately, he agreed and even helped by unbuttoning his shirt while I undid his pants. Soon, I was lying down and he was on top of me, circling his hips on top of mine, pressing our balls together, sliding our dicks across each other's. He was warm and soft and worked-up and he didn’t seem to mind when I moved my hand from cupping his ass to running it along the crease.

Then I found his hole. 

It felt taboo.

And kind of forbidden.

Like I couldn’t quite believe he didn’t shut me down or slap my hand away. But he didn’t. He pressed back into me, breaching himself on the tip of my finger. And when that happened, his eyes fluttered shut and his tongue wet his lower lip. His breath caught and then immediately got deeper.

He liked it.

_Fuck._

I didn’t know whether I was more fascinated or turned on. 

Ha. Who was I kidding? I was totally hard for him. And watching him as he got more and more into this only made me harder. 

“Lube,” he said out of nowhere.

“Huh? Oh, right. Yeah.” I reached over to the table and grabbed the (thankfully) newly unwrapped bottle.

“Give me your hand,” he told me. The _give me the bottle, too_ was unspoken. He put a drop on my index finger and another on the middle. I had finished thinking _that’s it? That’s all he wants to use?_ when he said, “Don’t worry, baby. We’re going to use a lot more in a minute.” 

I barely had time to worry about doing something wrongbefore he showed me what to do and how to do it. He showed me how to touch and tease and stretch him. “See how that feels different now?” he asked while grinding on three of my fingers, aiming so I’d press against something a bit like a spongy ping-pong ball. I pressed once more, harder this time, and saw his chest grow pinker and his balls get fuller. “Oh fuck, I need you inside me.”

_Oh, definitely._

I wrapped up while watching him slick up with more lube - front and back. As soon as the condom was on, he put more lube on me and held me firm while he positioned himself over my tip and slowly lowered himself down.

I was inside him.

Holy shit. 

I was inside him. 

He was warm and tight and moved with abandon like I’d never seen on someone. 

“Stroke me,” he said. Then he put my hand on his dick. 

So, I did.

I was having sex. 

With a guy. 

It was amazing.

I kept getting this feeling, this warm feeling, that would ebb through my body, up my chest, into my head, until thought I would explode. Then the feeling would recede. But only a little bit. Then it happened again and it was even more intense.

“Stop,” I pleaded. “Just for a second.” 

“Is something wrong?”

“Uh-uh, no. I just don’t want it to end yet.”

He folded at his hip to lean down with a sweet smile, to wrap his arms around my head and to give me kisses while we “stopped.”

He started again. Slowly at first. Then I grabbed his ass and used it as leverage to pull myself deeper into him. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t go slow. There was a point where I couldn’t even be considerate anymore. I just needed.

“Yes,” Danny cried. 

That did it. That explosion happened. It was huge and white and it was like dying but way better than all the other kinds of dying I did over the past few days. This was more like — a renewal. 

I was so spent, I couldn’t move.

But Danny continued bouncing up and down, jerking hard, and soon he came, too. All over me. He shuttered and he shivered and he spasmed long after there was anything coming out of him. It was stunning to watch. And even more stunning to still be inside him when he did it.

“Fuck, who are you?” I asked in wonder.

He took one breath and then another and then he pronounced, “I’m _starving_ , who are you?”

“Oh fuck! Oh no! Danny - dinner! I forgot about dinner,” I wiggled to the side. 

He wrestled me back. 

“Wait!” he insisted and eased off me. “Now you can go.”

I ran to the other room, butt naked save a droopy condom, to find the water unboiled and my sauce boiled down into something far more viscous than I intended it to be. I turned the stove off and gave it a stir. No matter what, _I’d_ eat it anyway but it really wasn’t what I wanted to feed Danny, especially after —

“Wow, that looks really good.” Danny was right next to me with the spoon already near his mouth, blowing to cool it down. He tasted it and nodded. Then he said, “It is actually really good. More of a stew, really. We don’t even need pasta to go with it. And it’s…” he ran his tongue around his mouth and thought for a second, “kind of smoky.”

I put my head in my hands. _Burned._

“No, really,” he insisted. “People pay good money to have stuff taste smokey. It’s good.”

He paused and looked me up and down. “Are you going to clean up, you heathen?”

I ran to the bathroom. In the other room, there were sounds of clattering dishes and utensils and a refrigerator door opening and closing. “You want Coke or water?”

“Iced tea.”

“We don’t have any…oh, you made some. Cool.”

The sounds continued as I got cleaned up and slipped back into my pants. 

_I had sex with a guy._

It was so sweet and hot that I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why the idea of it would offend people. It couldn’t. Not if they knew what it felt like or what it meant.

In the other room, Danny was at the seat on the left side table against the window. That became his seat. Mine, then, was on the right. There was a pair of plates heaped with smoky, mystery stew and served with tall glasses of iced tea (black, no lemon) on the table. Neither of us wearing shirts, and both of us had our hair pointed in all directions.

This was our first official dinner as roommates.

It was perfect.

A perfect moment.

A perfect way to end a shitty week.

I sat down and voiced my last niggling concern about this set-up. “Isn’t it a bad idea to, you know, mess around and live together?”

“Uh, _yeah_. It’s totally one of those things that everyone tells you not to do,” he verified with a twirl of his spoon. “But, consider the alternatives. Will you feel safe living at home after your mom comes home?”

“No, probably not.”

“No. Of course, not. And if your dad all of a sudden opened his arms and asked you to live with him, would you feel welcomed there?”

I laughed, “No. Definitely not.”

“Do I even need to ask how you feel about living with your grandmother?”

“Nope.”

“Do you have anywhere else lined up?”

“No, you know I don’t.”

“True. I know you don’t. So, it might be smart if I kept my hands off you. But is that what you want?”

I thought for a second. Not because I didn’t know the answer but because it wasn’t an answer that should have been blurted out without a moment's consideration. “No.”

“No. Neither do I. You know where that leaves us?”

I felt a smile creep over my face. “Living in sin?”

“Exactly.” 

We ate for a while and chatted about how we usually spent our days. Me with school and gymnastics and work and capoeira, in that order. Him with working at the coffee shop and shirking all other responsibilities. 

Danny pushed his plate forward and leaned in so that his elbow was on the table and his chin in his hand. “You know, Micah? I know this is supposed to be a bad idea but I have this feeling that asking you to move in is going to be one of my favorite decisions ever.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Me, too.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> There is nothing lighthearted or entertaining about child abuse, domestic violence, bullying, or mental health issues, nor should they be sensationalized. Their role in this story is quite specific in showing how violence can take many forms, many of which aren't acknowledged. Unfortunately, once a person identifies as a victim, they may fall into being a victim in other ways. Not because the person has "asked for it" -- because, no -- but because predators are very good at finding those who feel weak, dejected, abused, unvalued, and manipulating them into unhealthy situations.
> 
> I make no claims to be an expert on these topics, nor am I a professional counselor. If you know or suspect anyone who may be a victim, here are some resources below that may be helpful.
> 
> Child Abuse Hotline  
> Phone: 1-800-4-A-Child   
> Website: https://www.childhelp.org/hotline/
> 
> Stop Bullying Website: https://www.stopbullying.gov/get-help-now/
> 
> National Alliance on Mental Illness  
> Phone: 1-800-950-NAMI (6264)  
> Website: http://www.nami.org/Find-Support/NAMI-HelpLine


End file.
